CHAPTER III.

LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE. THE KING'S

LIBRARIAN.

IN 1692 the year of his first Boyle Lecturership-an accident placed Bentley in correspondence with John George Graevius, a German who held a professorship at Utrecht, and stood in the front rank of classicalespecially Latin-scholarship. When Bentley was seeking materials for an edition of Manilius, he received a box of papers from Sir Edward Sherburn, an old cavalier who had partly translated the poet. The papers in the box, bought at Antwerp, had belonged to the Dutch scholar, Gaspar Gevärts. Among them was a Latin tract by Albert Rubens (Rubenius'), the author of another treatise which Graevius had previously edited. Bentley, with Sherburn's leave, sent the newly-found tract to Graevius, who published it in 1694, with a dedication to Bentley. This circumstance afterwards brought on Bentley the absurd charge of having intercepted an honour due to Sherburn.

Graevius was rejoiced to open a correspondence with the author of the Letter to Mill, which he had warmly admired. The professor's son had lately died, leaving an unpublished edition of the Greek poet

J. B.

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Callimachus, which Graevius was now preparing to edit. He applied to Bentley for any literary aid that he could give. In reply, Bentley undertook to collect the fragments of Callimachus, scattered up and down throughout Greek literature; remarking that he could promise to double the number printed in a recent Paris edition, and also to improve the text. In 1696 Bentley fulfilled this promise by sending to Graevius a collection of about 420 fragments; also a new recension of the poet's epigrams, with additions to their number from a fresh manuscript source, and with some notes on the hymns. The edition appeared at Utrecht in 1697, with Bentley's contributions.

In the preface Graevius shows his sense that the work done by Bentley 'that new and brilliant light of Britain' -was not merely excellent in quality, but of a new order. Such indeed it was. Since then, successive generations have laboured at collecting and sifting the fragments of the Greek poets. But in 1697 the world had no example of systematic work in this field. The first pattern of thorough treatment and the first model of critical method were furnished by Bentley's Callimachus. Hitherto the collector of fragments had aimed at little more than heaping together the limbs of the dismembered poet.' Bentley shows how these limbs, when they have been gathered, may serve, within certain limits, to reconstruct the body. Starting from a list of the poet's works, extant or known by title, he aims at arranging the fragments under those works to which they severally belonged. But, while he concentrates his critical resources in a methodical manner, he wisely refrains from pushing conjecture too far. His Callimachus is hardly more distinguished by brilliancy than by cautious judgment; praise which could not be given

to all his later works. Here, as in the Letter to Mill, we see his metrical studies bearing fruit: thus he points out a fact which had hitherto escaped even such scholars as Saumaise and Casaubon,-that the Greek diphthongs ai and oi cannot be shortened before consonants. Ernesti, in the preface to his Callimachus (1763), speaks of Bentley as 'having distanced competition:' and another estimate, of yet higher authority, is expressed more strongly still. Nothing more excellent in its kind. has appeared,' said Valckenaer,-'nothing more highly finished;' 'a most thorough piece of work, by which writers who respect their readers might well be deterred' from an attempt at rivalry. It is no real abatement of Bentley's desert that a few gleanings were left for those who came after him. Here, as in some other cases, the distinctive merit of his work is not that it was final but that it was exemplary. In this particular department -the editing of fragments-he differed from his predecessors as the numismatist, who arranges a cabinet of coins, differs from the digger who is only aware that he has unearthed an old bit of gold or silver.

Meanwhile letters had been passing between Bentley and a correspondent very unlike Graevius. In 1693 Joshua Barnes, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, was editing Euripides, and wrote to Bentley, asking his reasons for an opinion attributed to him,—that the 'Letters of Euripides' were spurious. Bentley gave these reasons in a long and courteous reply. Barnes, however, resented the loss of a cherished illusion. only did he omit to thank Bentley, but in the preface to Not his Euripides (1694) he alluded to his correspondent's opinion as 'a proof of effrontery or incapacity.' Barnes is a curious figure, half comic half-pathetic, among the

minor persons of Bentley's story. Widely read, incessantly laborious, but uncritical and vain, he poured forth a continual stream of injudicious publications, English or Greek, until, when he was fifty-one, they numbered forty-three. The last work of his life was an elaborate edition of Homer. He had invested the

fortune of Mrs Barnes in this costly enterprise,-obtaining her somewhat reluctant consent, it was said, by representing the Iliad as the work of King Solomon. Queen Anne declined the dedication, and nothing could persuade poor Barnes that this was not Bentley's doing. Bentley said of Barnes that he probably knew about as much Greek, and understood it about as well, as an Athenian blacksmith. The great critic appears to have forgotten that Sophocles and Aristophanes were appreciated by audiences which represented the pit and the gallery much more largely than the boxes and the stalls. An Athenian blacksmith could teach us a good many things.

Bentley had now made his mark, and he had powerful friends. One piece of preferment after another came to him. In 1692 Bishop Stillingflect procured for him a prebendal stall at Worcester, and three years later appointed him to hold the Rectory of Hartlebury, in that county, until James Stillingfleet should be in full orders. At the end of the year 1693 the office of Royal Librarian became vacant. By an arrangement which was not then thought singular, the new Librarian was induced to resign in favour of Bentley, who was to pay him £130 a year out of the salary of £200. The patent appointing Bentley Keeper of the Royal Libraries bore date April 12, 1694. The Licensing Act' (Stat. 13 and 14, Car. II.) finally expired in 1694, a few months

after Bentley took office. But he made the most of his time. The Act reserved three copies of every book printed in England, one for the Royal Library, one for Oxford, and one for Cambridge. Latterly it had been evaded. Bentley applied to the Master of the Stationers' Company, and exacted near a thousand' volumes. In this year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1695 he became a Chaplain in ordinary to the King. Hitherto he had resided with Bishop Stillingfleet: but early in 1696 he took possession of the rooms in St James's Palace which were assigned to the Royal Librarian.

One of his letters to Evelyn-whom he had been helping to revise his Numismata, a 'Discourse on Medals, ancient and modern'-discloses an amusing incident. Bentley's lodgings at St James's were next the Earl of Marlborough's. Bentley wished to annex some rooms overhead, for the better bestowal of certain rare books. Marlborough undertook to plead his cause. The result of this obliging diplomacy was that the future hero of Blenheim got the closets' for himself. Bentley now became anxious to build a new library, and Evelyn warmly sympathises with his 'glorious enterprise.' It was, indeed, much needed. The books were so ill-lodged that they could not be properly arranged; Bentley declared that the library was 'not fit to be seen;' and he kept its chief treasure, the Alexandrine MS. of the Greek Bible, at his own rooms in the palace, 'for this very reason, that persons might see it without seeing the library.' The Treasury consented to the proposal for building. But public business prevented the bill coming before Parliament, and the scheme was dropped for the time. Meanwhile Bentley's energy found scope at Cambridge. Since the civil troubles, the University